


The Spring of Magic

by Ad_Absurdum



Series: Imaginary Fragrances [4]
Category: Imaginary Authors (Perfume House)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Gen, Imaginary Fragrance, M/M, Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 05:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17135672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ad_Absurdum/pseuds/Ad_Absurdum
Summary: Notes:rainy street, wet umbrellas, chimney smoke, carnations, raspberries, a hint of rose and pine treesWhen to wear:This scent unfurls gradually and may surprise you, much like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, a coin out of your ear or you out of this world. A mysterious and layered fragrance that is suitable for evenings out - whether you come back or not.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Actually only the first chapter is what the fragrance was supposed to be about. The second chapter happened when the story sort of got away from me and went... somewhere. Still not sure where, LOL.  
> Also, if anyone cares (which is doubtful but anyway), there's a song and a picture to go with the story but no, I'm not posting the links.

The boy standing with his Mum in front of a bookshop, was starting to get bored. He and his Mum went shopping (and she promised to buy him that book about Fair Folk _and_ the night sky atlas he'd been wanting for ages), but now they were stuck in front of that bookshop for what felt like half an hour already. His Mum met a friend she hadn't seen in a long time and they were talking and talking and it didn't look like they would finish anytime soon.

And on top of that it started raining. The bookshop had a very cool awning (well, the boy thought it was cool - it had that slightly graveyard-like feeling to it, maybe because of the stone ornaments, maybe because of the churchy, incense-y smell that always lingered there for no apparent reason) and while they stood there, the boy's Mum was telling her friend everything that happened in the past year - or ten - her friend was doing the same and the boy was getting bored.

He'd already seen all the books that were in the display window here and he couldn't be bothered to listen to his Mum and her friend's stories about people he'd never met. And those stories weren't very interesting anyway. Something about weddings and kids and school reunions. What could be interesting about that?

The boy looked around the street. It was the old part of town where the cars weren't allowed and there were cobblestones and streetlamps that looked like they were taken straight from an old Sherlock Holmes film. The boy liked this place very much.

The rain and the hour - it was nearly five P.M. judging by the clock on the nearby church tower - made it darker than it would normally be. Even if it was only early spring, the sun had been generous with its light and warmth. Up until now, that is. It wasn't quite dusk yet, but the streetlamps were lit anyway, casting a comforting orange glow on everything around.

The boy's eyes lingered on a flower stand on the other side of the street. He'd found the different scents of the flowers fascinating and it always surprised him when his Mum claimed that some of the flowers there didn't have any smell at all. They all had. The boy suspected his Mum was not attentive enough.

Now there were hardly any people wanting to buy flowers - not in such weather - and the old lady who worked there was probably thinking about closing the stand for the day. Everybody just rushed past, huddled under an umbrella or a quickly soaking newspaper.

Although... The boy squinted. Yes, he was right: there was a man there - without any umbrella or a raincoat - who was standing just next to a vase of pink carnations and breathing in their scent like his life depended on it. The rain didn't seem to bother him. To be honest, it looked like the rain didn't even touch him. His coat was dry, his hair was dry... Didn't people passing him by find this strange?

The boy glanced around. Well, apparently not.

He looked back at the man only to find that he was no longer inhaling the flowers and instead was striding, rather purposefully, towards where the boy stood.

"Hello, little Human," the man said with a grin and a bit of strange accent in his voice.

The boy frowned. Was this man a foreigner? Why was he calling him "human"? Weren't they all humans here? And what was up with this man still being completely dry as if he hadn't just walked through the rain that soaked everyone except him?

All those questions crowded in the boy's mind, but what actually emerged was, "I'm not little. I'm nearly nine."

"Oh, is that so?" The man seemed delighted.

The boy couldn't figure out if the man was mocking him or not, so he said nothing.

"When are you going to turn nine?" the man asked. He looked like he was genuinely interested.

"In July," the boy replied. He still wasn't sure if he was being mocked (well, none of the other adults he knew ever showed such an interest in his assertions about not being 'little' anymore), but since the man was polite about it, he decided it wouldn't hurt to be polite in return.

"Really?"

Was the man surprised about that? The boy couldn't fathom the reason why.

"Yes," he eventually said when it looked like the man expected some sort of answer.

"Oh." The man paused. "You don't look like a summer child. You look like you were born in November."

The boy stared. Who said things like that? And was so sure about them too? And how was he supposed to look like anyway?

As if hearing that thought, the man spoke again:

"You have dark hair and dark blue eyes. And you frown all the time." The man poked the boy's forehead right between the eyebrows where the boy's frown was quickly becoming a scowl.

"This is the silliest thing I've ever heard," the boy huffed, irritated. He glanced at his Mum, but she was still busy talking to her friend and paid no attention to her son. The boy sighed to himself - he would have to deal with this strange man and even stranger conversation on his own.

He batted away the man's finger which was still poking his forehead. Some adults were just weird.

"How would you know anyway how I'm supposed to look? When were _you_ born?"

The man smiled brightly at the question.

"I was born exactly one hundred years ago. Today's my birthday," he said proudly.

Well, there was a rather obvious problem with that statement.

The boy looked at the man sceptically.

"You're a hundred years old," he said, just to make sure.

The man nodded, that bright smile still firmly fixed on his face.

The boy wasn't convinced. "My Grandpa's birthday was a couple of days ago. He's sixty." The boy remembered all the candles on his Grandpa's birthday cake with crystal clarity. "He looks older than you. _My Mum_ looks older than you."

The man fared remarkably well under that double accusation.

"I know." His smile became brighter. "Humans age so fast. A bit of a pity, really."

And there it was again, the _humans_ said like this man was somehow different. The boy had enough.

"Why do you keep saying 'humans'? Did you drop from the Moon or something?"

The man laughed. "Or something. Hey, do you have anything specific you want for your birthday?"

That change of subject was so fast it could give one a whiplash but it served to completely distract the boy from his frustration.

"Uh, I don't know."

The man looked through the display window into the bookshop.

"A book perhaps? Which one would you like?"

This was getting suspicious, the boy thought. In his experience strange people never showed that much interest in him or offered to buy him anything - as this man seemed to be doing right now. In fact, strange people never offered to do anything for him or his Mum _or_ his Dad and especially not if that involved spending money.

"Well?" The man was evidently waiting for an answer.

"Well..." the boy hesitated, but decided to tell the truth. "My Mum promised to buy me two books today. One as an early birthday present."

That one was expensive.

"Which ones?"

"The night sky atlas and the _Fair Folk - Separating the Myth From the Truth_."

"Really?" The man looked at the boy with wide eyes. "Do you believe that Fae exist?"

That was a very good question, to which the boy didn't exactly know the answer. He wanted to say yes, but on the other hand, his brain told him such things weren't real at all. Finally he sighed. "They are just a myth. But they're interesting."

The man seemed satisfied with that.

"Well, what about you? Did you get anything for your birthday?" the boy asked.

_Your hundredth birthday_ he wanted to add, now thoroughly convinced the man was lying through his teeth.

"I came here to choose a gift for myself."

That seemed reasonable.

"Did you find anything?"

The man looked from the display window back at the boy.

"Yes."

"What is it?"

The man smiled. "I'll tell you some other day."

The boy frowned again. That was horribly unfair.

The man poked the boy's forehead again and laughed when his hand was batted away.

"Here," he crouched in front of the boy. "Want to see a magic trick?"

Well, why not? This meeting was strange enough already. What was one more thing?

The boy nodded.

"Look."

Seemingly out of nowhere, the man produced a rose bud. The tightly folded petals were the deepest crimson the boy had ever seen and looked as soft as velvet. Before his eyes, the bud blossomed, the petals unfolding until the flower was almost as big as the man's open palm on which it was sitting.

The boy's eyes grew wide with wonder. He sniffed and caught a scent that was rich and dark and heady and yet not cloying at all.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes, it's very pretty," the boy replied truthfully, quite impressed with the display. This was _some_ magic trick. It certainly beat the coin-out-of-your-ear type pf tricks his uncle Arthur was so fond of.

The man's eyes creased with quiet laughter.

"I'm glad it meets your approval. Now, take a deep breath."

The boy obeyed almost involuntarily and at the same time he inhaled, the man blew gently on the rose - it send a cloud of shimmering red dust right into the boy's face. The boy closed his eyes instinctively, the dust going up his nose and down his throat so that he could almost taste it. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation - the dust was all raspberries, roses and sweetness and as distracted by all that as the boy was, he still felt a touch to his forehead and heard _'forget'_ carried on a breath.

The boy opened his eyes and looked up at his Mum. She was finally wrapping up her conversation and saying goodbye to her friend. It was high time as far as the boy was concerned. It felt like they'd been standing there a week. Or at least an hour already. It even stopped raining.

The boy sneezed. For some reason he had the scent of roses and raspberries somewhere up his nose. Strange that.

"You okay there? Here, blow your nose." The boy's Mum gave him a packet of tissues. "Okay, so are you ready for the bookshopping?"

"Yes, Mum," the boy replied, barely holding on to his patience.

"All right then. In we go."


	2. Chapter 2

The writer woke up abruptly, his eyes meeting the darkness of his bedroom.

It was the first time he dreamt about this particular memory, but the dream was different than the reality. Although it happened so long ago, he still remembered the street, the rain, the bookshop and his mother, but there was someone else too, wasn't there? The details were fading fast and after a brief struggle, he gave up on trying to grasp them. They vanished like the proverbial smoke and after another moment the writer really only remembered that he got terribly ill after that shopping trip. Some atypical flu - he was later told by his parents - that kept him in bed for two weeks straight.

He remembered that because when his fever finally dropped to a reasonable level, he managed to read the whole of _Fair Folk..._ \- all four hundred and fifty seven pages of it.

He still had the book, along with the sky atlas. In fact, they both stood on a bookshelf just in the other room.

The writer smiled faintly and closed his eyes again. The Fae had very interesting habits, the book claimed. They often visited the human world, but when they took a fancy to someone, that person was as good as dead to his or her own world - one day they simply disappeared without even a chance to say their goodbyes and they were never seen again. Age didn't seem to matter, nor the marital status. The Fae never let go of anybody they took.

The writer drifted off to sleep, wondering why that was. Didn't they get bored? Well, maybe not. Their lifespan was so long a human's life must have seemed to them like a mere moment.

* * *

The next day dawned rainy and cold. The spring took its time to show itself this year. The writer would much prefer to stay home and - in the interest of his over-stressed agent - try to work on his seemingly never-ending novel. It just got longer and longer and there was no end in sight and the writer often wondered if the readers would be as bored by all this drivel as the writer himself was getting. But well, there were bills to be paid and groceries to be shopped for. In a word, life waited to be lived to its fullest.

The writer sighed, took his umbrella from its stand by the door, and went outside.

He took a different route on the way back to his flat. Maybe it was the dream, maybe the need for change, but he found himself taking a walk through the old part of the town. The bookshop was, of course, no longer there, replaced by yet another branch office of some bank or another. The flower stand also disappeared some years ago. But there was a café - quite crowded during the summer months (or so the writer heard), although now, looking from the outside, it seemed almost empty.

The writer went in - the bell above the door jangling merrily in direct contrast to the weather and the writer's mood - and noticed there was indeed only one other customer there: a young woman nursing a cup of coffee, with her baby sleeping in a pram next to the table.

The writer sat by the window, a safe distance away so that there was no chance the woman would be tempted to talk to him, and ordered an ice cream. He thought the waitress might have looked at him a bit oddly (who ordered ice cream in such weather?) but he didn't really care.

He stared at the world outside the window. Despite it being the middle of the day, the street lamps were on, their light casting orange glow on wet cobblestones and wet umbrellas of people rushing by.

The writer squinted. Was he imagining things or was there really someone there on the other side of the street, walking through the rain as if he hadn't a care in the world? Without any sort of raincoat. Or umbrella. Or even a soggy newspaper to cover his head.

The writer watched as the man came closer. The rain didn't seem to be bothering him. In fact, it looked like the rain didn't touch him at all. Strange that.

The writer rested his chin on his hand an half-closed his eyes. Maybe he was starting to hallucinate? He didn't really get a good sleep last night. He had weird dreams that kept waking him up though now he couldn't remember what they were all about. And on top of that, a few days ago he got what seemed like the worst writer's block in history. It was getting ridiculous - his brain couldn't cough up more than a sentence a day.

When he opened his eyes it was to the sight of the man he noticed earlier staring through the café's window straight at the writer and grinning a bit manically.

The writer scowled. What did this bloke want from him?

The waitress chose that moment to appear with the order. Three scoops of vanilla ice cream, topped with dark chocolate sauce and cherries that had been soaked in alcohol. The writer smiled faintly at the dessert - if you couldn't have those simple pleasures once in a while, what was the point of living?

He thanked the waitress, thinking he would later order a cup of tea. He took the last look at the window in front of him, but that man was no longer there.

Good, the writer thought and spooned the ice cream. The taste was really something else. No wonder this café was so popular.

He heard the bell announcing someone just opened the café's door. Apparently, he wasn't the only one to want sweets in this awful weather. He went to take another spoonful of his dessert, when he realised the newcomer stopped by his table.

He looked up.

The man that only seconds ago had been peering through the window, was now standing over the writer. He no longer wore that manic grin and only that made the writer stay in his chair. In fact, the smile that the stranger was now casting towards the writer was rather gentle and somehow comforting. And quite pretty.

The writer averted his eyes, frowning to himself. Of all the stray thoughts...

"Hello again." The man seated himself at the table. "Long time no see, as you humans say."

_Humans_?

"I don't believe we've ever met." The writer's frown deepened into a scowl. "And I would appreciate it if you vacated this chair and moved yourself somewhere else."

The writer wasn't in the mood to be nice today and, really, he just wanted to eat his ice cream in peace. Was it too much to ask? He took another bite, the chocolate and vanilla instantly soothing his temper (this _had_ to be some sort of sorcery), but the ensuing silence made him glance up again.

He was completely taken aback by the man's crestfallen expression, but in the blink of an eye it vanished (was it there at all?) and was replaced by something very much like an epiphany.

"Oh, you don't remember!"

That wasn't a question and the writer didn't bother with an answer, munching on a vodka-soaked cherry instead. Honestly, what was this man's problem? Couldn't he find someone else to bother? And wasn't the waitress supposed to be standing over this man already and demanding he ordered something? What was he? invisible?

Meanwhile the man produced - seemingly out of thin air - a rose that was the deepest crimson the writer had ever seen (something teased at the writer's memory). And then without further ado, he blew the crimson dust that must have covered the rose, right into the writer's face.

The writer didn't cough up his lungs only because he was so stunned he stopped breathing. And also because the dust did not actually irritate his nose or throat. Instead, when inhaled, it tasted sort of like marmalade made of rose petals and raspberries.

"Oh." The writer blinked, still in shock. "It's you."

He remembered. Both his dream and the actual memory. It was also possible he was experiencing an onset of a nervous breakdown and/or was hallucinating. Oh joy. But maybe now his books would acquire a surrealistic bent or something. Sort of like the wordy equivalents of Dali's paintings (although as far as the writer remembered, Dali didn't have a nervous breakdown when he created his most famous works. Though he might have possibly been hallucinating).

The man in front of him was still smiling brightly, and the writer finally focussed back on that.

"Who _are_ you?"

Even if it was a hallucination, he might talk to it. Besides, the man didn't look a day older than when the writer thought they first met and it was at least thirty years ago, for Pete's sake!

"And just how old are you really?"

The man's smile brightened, if that was possible. It wasn't unnerving only because his smile really was quite pretty. The writer frowned severely at the table.

"I'm one hundred and thirty. Today is my birthday."

The writer narrowed his eyes. This conversation certainly seemed familiar. Then he sighed. Ah, whatever. Wasn't he always wishing for his life to be _interesting_? This hallucination was interesting all right. He could definitely play along.

"And you came here to buy yourself a gift?"

The man laughed, the sound clear and joyful. The writer, almost despite himself, smiled as well.

"Not quite. I came to collect... it." Here the man hesitated as if he wasn't sure about his choice of words. "Him," he finally amended.

"Him?" The writer swallowed a spoonful of his ice cream. Nervous breakdown or not, he just couldn't let such a tasty treat go to waste. "Is it a pet?"

"No no no." The man waved his hand, a bit flustered. That was a new look on him, the writer thought, amused. "Certainly not a pet."

"Then what?"

Since this man treated social conventions like they were nothing, the writer felt he was perfectly entitled to being nosy in turn. He took another spoonful of the dessert and noticed the man's eyes following his movements.

"This looks quite delicious," the man said, gazing longingly at the spoon.

"Mhm, it really is."

The man sat up straighter. "May I have some?" He sent the writer his most charming smile yet.

Honestly, this man was worse than a child, but the writer actually found it hard to refuse.

"You don't have a spoon," he tried, but somehow knew the answer already.

"There is a perfectly good spoon right here," the man said, his smile turning expectant.

Oh what the hell, the writer thought, scooping a generous portion of the ice cream, chocolate and cherries. He glanced around, but nobody paid them the least bit of attention. It was like they really were invisible.

He was definitely hallucinating then, although something he read a long time ago flashed through his mind just now. He couldn't quite grasp the memory, though.

"Well, here," he said, holding the spoon to the man. Who made no move to take it.

Oh, you can't be serious, the writer thought, watching as the man tried not to laugh at his realisation that yes, the man was expecting to be spoon-fed.

With a resigned sigh, the writer gave up and watched as the man closed his eyes in obvious delight at the dessert's taste.

"Mmm, delicious." The man licked his lips.

"Yeah," the writer said, a bit distracted by the thought he would now have to eat with the spoon that had just been thoroughly and very indecently licked.

He gulped, his hand holding the spoon, hovering over the ice cream. He felt as if he was on the brink of crossing some Very Important Line and entering a Strange and Forbidden Territory. And that his subconsciousness had a lot to answer for.

He blinked. Wow, that was some terrible overdramatisation right there.

"Wait." The man stopped the writer's hand when he was about to plunge it into the ice cream.

The man tapped the rose he'd conjured up earlier, dusting the ice cream with its crimson powder as if he were a chocolatier putting the finishing touches on the tastiest and most expensive of his desserts.

"Try now."

The writer hesitated but only for a moment. Surely, you couldn't get poisoned by a figment of your imagination, could you?

The ice cream tasted of rose and raspberries. It was actually very good. Perhaps even better that it already was. And then suddenly everything went dark and when the writer felt himself slipping from his chair and falling down and down, his last thought was 'You complete and utter idiot'.

* * *

He woke up to the brown almond-shaped eyes staring at him from entirely too close a distance.

"Welcome back." The man moved away, allowing the writer to breathe more easily.

"Yeah, thanks." the writer said and then paused, finally registering his surroundings.

"Where am I?"

This was certainly not the café he'd entered this mid-day. In fact it looked like the inside of a cabin in the woods. There were a few odd things here and there, but the place had that unmistakeable rustic feel to it that was - surprisingly - quite comforting. And if he was hallucinating before, what on Earth was he supposed to call _this_?

"Home."

_Home?_

"Well, this certainly is not _my_ home," the writer abandoned his hallucination-slash-nervous-breakdown dilemma to the need for pointing out the obvious.

"No, it's mine." The man was smiling and only now the writer noticed the... pointed ears.

And then it finally clicked. He remembered reading in the _Fair Folk..._ all about the living conditions of this race that was apparently not so mythical. And also about their appearance, habits and so on and so forth. So maybe his mental faculties were still intact after all. And wouldn't that be even stranger?

He sat up abruptly.

"That gift you were talking about..." he said, a nasty suspicion in his mind.

"Well, I have him now. I think I've waited long enough." The man's possessive gaze left nothing to the imagination. There really was no doubt who he was talking about.

The writer dropped flat on the bed again.

"Jesus, I've been kidnapped by a Fairy."

"You don't like it?"

There was a slight concern in the man's voice as he leant over the writer.

"I..."

The writer was about to say he definitely didn't like it and then demand to be returned to his own home. Or at least his own world. However, something stopped him. Well, he _could_ do without being called a 'gift', but otherwise... Had his life been so great and exciting that he wanted it back?

He would only leave... his family, his friends (all two of them) and his agent. The poor bloke would probably be happier without all the stress the writer seemed to be constantly causing him. Though to be fair, the agent would also probably kill him the next time the writer set foot anywhere near the agency - he still had to finish that bloody novel he somehow couldn't extricate from inside himself at all.

It dawned on the writer that he sort of wanted to stay exactly where he was. Well, for a while at least.

"I don't know," he finally said. "Maybe let me settle things back home first. I do have work there, you know."

The man frowned. "You can't go back. You ate Faerie food, you're mine now."

Say what?

"I'm not your anything. No, not even a 'gift'." Being considered a thing was bloody annoying, that's what it was. "Besides, you ate human food. Does that mean you're mine as well now?" And turning the tables was only fair.

The man got a decidedly sly look on his face and the writer suddenly remembered the chapter describing the Fair Folk's mating habits. Well shit, this didn't bode well.

"Would you like me to give you my name?"

And there it was. The Proposal. Capital letters and fancy script because when a Fairy gave you his or her name and took yours in return, you were as good as married.

"Wait, that wasn't what I meant." The writer tried to backpedal, but really, this man had to know exactly what he was doing when he asked for that ice cream.

"You don't know me," He tried for a reason because, honestly, marrying someone you didn't know spelled disaster right from the beginning. And, Christ, when did he start to think in marriage terms?

"I do. I've been watching you."

And that was just creepy.

"You what?"

"Well, I had to keep an eye on the one I chose, didn't I?" The man twirled a strand of the writer's hair between his fingers.

_That_ sounded even creepier.

"I even gave you enough time to meet someone and get married. But you never did." The man was smiling happily. "I'm so glad you waited for me."

"I didn't," the writer said, but it sounded like a feeble, last-ditch attempt at denial. Was he really waiting for something - or someone as it were - all these years and that was why he never had a serious relationship in his life?

No, that surely couldn't be the case. That was pretty much impossible. Besides, there was still one rather obvious problem.

"Well, then _I_ don't know _you_. And I'm not gay," he added after a pause. That was probably worth pointing out.

The man looked at the writer as if he was being stupid.

"I know that. And we could have a courting period, if you wanted." The man got a dreamy expression on his face.

Oh God, the Faerie tradition.

"That was certainly _not_ what I meant. And how did we get into a discussion about bonding anyway?"

That was a million-dollar question, as they said.

"Well," the man got a speculative glint in his eye. "If we were bonded, I could let you visit the human world once in a while. You'd be mine anyway and you wouldn't be tempted to run off."

And that was either an extreme case of possessiveness or insecurity. Probably both.

The writer frowned to himself and then sighed. "You seriously don't see any problems with this situation? Seriously? You want to trap me in some weird relationship--" here the man winced and it occurred to the writer he might just have offended some Faerie tradition. It was too late to stop, though. "--but I _really_ don't want to be trapped. How do you propose we solve that?"

The man frowned. "I could just make you want to stay here, you know."

"No, you couldn't. You don't want a pet and we're already in the first stages of courtship, aren't we?"

And here came the time to test just how truthful that book he read so long ago was.

The man looked down guiltily and then pouted. "Why did you have to read the _Fair Folk..._ to the end? And remember so much? That chapter wasn't really for children."

The writer shook with silent laughter at the man's accusing look. 'Because I loved those stories, you idiot,' he thought, but out loud he said, "So I was right. You actually _can't_ do anything to make me stay here."

"Well... no." It looked like the admission cost the man a lot. "But... you really don't want to stay? I could take on the female form if that's what you prefer."

The self-righteous triumph the writer felt was very short-lived. He was surprised, shocked even, that this man, this... creature that came straight from the myths and dreams of people that were long gone from this world or another, just promised to change permanently only to keep the writer by his side. The very insignificant, nearing-his-forties, nothing-special-to-look-at writer who couldn't even finish a book he'd been writing for the past year. Or two.

Why? Why on God's earth...?

"I don't want you to change." That was the least the writer could say.

"Oh." The man bit his lip, obviously unhappy. "So you just want to leave."

The writer looked at the man, really looked at him, noting the gentle line of his jaw, the soft lips... There was nothing sharp or even overly masculine about the man's face already. His delicate features actually made him look... even if not exactly feminine, then at least otherworldly. And quite beautiful, if the writer wanted to be honest with himself.

He touched one pointed ear.

"I didn't say that either." If this creature chose him - for some reason the writer had no hope of understanding - maybe he could at least try to get used to the situation? And then see where _that_ led.

"So what do you want? You're confusing." The man frowned, but was leaning slightly into the touch.

The writer took his hand away, embarrassed that he wanted to continue the caress.

"How about you give me some time to adjust? And let me go back home? For a while at least?"

"But you'll forget me. And you won't come back. And I don't want to wait another thirty years." The man's frustration was almost palpable.

"Well, whose fault was it that I forgot? I seem to remember some underhanded magic going on then," the writer said, but with a smile. He didn't want his words to hurt even a little bit. Then he cleared his throat, unsure if what he was about to say would mean he was inviting nothing but trouble into his life.

"You do know that you could always come with me, right?"

"Really?" That apparently didn't occur to the man right until now.

"Well, yes."

Now, in for a penny, in for a pound.

"You could live with me. Or just visit from time to time, whichever you prefer. And sometime in the future, we could even move here. If you'd still want me then, that is."

The man's smile literally lit up the whole room and the writer smiled as well. Yup, his life was about to get turned completely upside down. Good.


End file.
